Sassafras

Tuesday, April 08, 2014

So I've been reading The History of Love as of late. Thus far, it is hauntingly beautiful.

I picked it up years ago at a half price book store, and I honestly can't remember the motivation to do so. Curiosity? A recommendation of one of the employees, perhaps? Or maybe the title. For I hear, the best place to understand something is to start at the beginning. Explore its past.

Nonetheless, it sat on that bookshelf for countless hours/days/month/years, until the day came when a moment of honesty led the inquisitive girl to learn of love.

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."

Monday, April 07, 2014

I've been thinking quite a bit about the concept of light. It started with this talk from last week's Women's General Meeting from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Charity, a dear friend of mine, invited me to go and will I forever be grateful for that invite.

At the beginning of her talk, Sister Wixom invited the younger girls to stand and sing "Teach Me to Walk in the Light." The conference center was peppered with countless little girls dressed in their best outfits, complete with little bows and sparkly shoes. As they stood up timidly at first, glancing back at their mothers with shy smiles, Sister Wixom start to hum the first few notes of the song, and as she did so, the conference started to fill with these tiny voices of pure love. Innocent, heart overflowing voices that, as humble as they sang, pierced me to the core.

We joined in on the second verse "Come little child and together we'll learn..." So many thoughts flooded me. Of my future family and the realization that I will one day bring my little girl to future gatherings and hopefully have her experience such a moment. Of my duty to be a leader to these impressionable minds. Of the truth that in that moment they were entirely teaching me how to walk in that light.

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Getting ready to walk out of work yesterday after a very busy and very productive day, I was finishing up a few tasks when Dr. A called from his desk "There's been another shooting at Fort Hood..."
"Excuse me?" I said, my voice laced with disdain as I thought he was somehow kidding with April Fool's recently in our wake.
"Yeah, it's on the news," he said, more sensitivity in his voice.
One look at his face and I saw this was no joke.

Now I know there are thousands of soldiers on Fort Hood, around 70,000 to be more accurate. But I couldn't help the immediate concern I had for my friends back home. I consider them family, really. How I learned to so much from them... how I changed so, so much for the better simply by loving and serving them, and letting them love me. I know it sounds cheesy, but there is something to be said when you get to the point with people that you drop all barriers and be your real self with them.

And so my stomach dropped as I reached for the phone. First call, and then second. And that was far to slow, so here is one of those times that I admittedly am grateful for Facebook. One message later, and fears were abated.

All are safe and accounted for (how I feel for those who were not so lucky). And my gratitude for each of my soldiers, my fellow friends, is deep tonight.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

I don't even know how to start with this. Well, best to start from this morning. George, a dear military friend of mine, said his good-byes after visiting for the week, and as I reached over to the phone to check the time, I saw a letter from my friend David. I really hate the term "ex-boyfriend" because it just sounds so harsh, but I have yet to learn of another way to describe someone you loved so deeply at one point, and yet no longer have that life with anymore. Of course I still have feelings of love of him, I think everyone always has a bit of love in their hearts for those who have influenced them in an intimate and meaningful way. But, it's different now. I now get it when I learned in my humanities classes the different forms of Greek love... Agape, Eros, Philia. For, what I now feel for David is a friendship type of love.

So, the email was a bit of a surprise, since I hadn't heard from him for many o' months. Honestly, while George was up here he mentioned that he hadn't seen David for a long while at the branch, so that was a bit concerning for me, especially since working in the ED for so many years, you can't help but think of worst case scenarios.

So I looked at the phone to read the subject line, "You should probably sit down before reading this." I had seen that similar expression before with a few of my girlfriends, to which they followed with "I'm getting married!" So naturally, I thought this was David emailing to say he'd got engaged.

Nope.

Quite the opposite, actually. He's been diagnosed with a form of leukemia and will return home from Korea this week (as he is currently deployed there) to receive chemotherapy and additional treatments. Don't know the prognosis yet. We chatted via Gmail later in the day, and it was so hard to keep the conversation light; I tried my hardest not to bombard with a gazillion questions, but really, I have a habit of getting directly to the point. I knew that that's what he was trying to do, to keep it light, but it was a bit of a struggle to kid around and still process the news.

I'm trying to find the points of gratitude in all this, and honestly it's a bit of a struggle. But I am grateful to see he is still alive and did not die while combat. I'm grateful he is coming back to the US to Walter Reed, and will be much closer to his parents. I'm grateful that I have friends at the U that hopefully will be able to tell me more so that I can pass that information along to him. And I'm grateful for the strength that can be found beyond ourselves during times of devastating crisis.